Outside of Gordon and Chandler, two guys i really like are Meeks (hugely underrated, fantastic shooter) and George Hill.

Meeks isn't overrated at all, he's just a pure shooter. His defense is horrible and pretty Jose-esque (pre-2012), i.e. he just lets people blow by him.

However, we are one of the worst 3pt shooting teams this season and I would recommend picking him to fill the role that Butler was supposed to this season. He's gonna cost the MLE at most and if we barter right we may be able to get him+cash for Amir straight up.

Portland has started Batum at SG twice this year. In very limited minutes his production and defense, according to 82games.com, has been very impressive. His 33 point outburst came with a start at SG (unfortunately Portland lost 124-109 at home to Washington in this game and Nick Young went for 35 points on 12-17 shooting, 7-8 from deep).

What if the Raptors picked a SF in the draft, say Harrison Barnes, and overpaid to get Batum at SG (because overpaying will be the only way to get Batum out of Portland). Starting lineup next year:

PG: Calderon
SG: Batum
SF: Barnes
PF: Bargnani
C: JV

His handle and finish appears to be better than that of the current starting SG:

Here is why overpaying would not be a huge issue (not ideal, but not a hindrance):

- the most Toronto could offer is a 4 year deal - 2012 rookie and JV will be on rookie deals for those 4 years.
- Bargnani has 3 years left on a very reasonable contract (assuming new Bargs is for real)
- Calderon sheds $10.5M for 2013-14 season giving them enough room to pursue a PG at that time.

This idea would essentially mean DeRozan is not part of the future moving forward. The idea of giving up on DeRozan is still very much premature. However, if he doesn't put it together over the last 33 games of the season (return from All-Star break on) then decisions will have to be made.

Thats a point but wouldnt it be ironic that while his distaste for the Raps (we are conjecturing here I think) was primarily because the medical check demand resulted in his fall in the draft (and hence less salary), he now gets it back thru possible overpayment from the very team causing the discomfort. Besides shouldnt he have grownup by now...that was prudent business by the Raps not personal.

Wasn't there a Toronto Sun article a few weeks back suggesting as such? I can't seem to find it.

I'd love to see it because it totally missed our radar here. I don't remember anyone posting it in here and I think such a story is good enough right now in this little boring spurt to warrant it's own thread.

yeah he did supposedly say that. i vaguely remember him saying the raps made him look like he had a heart problem or something? and his dad died of a heart problem literally at a free throw line or something? anyways, i guess he argued it scared teams off drafting him. we talked about this like 2 weeks ago.

That was a retweet of someone else (jberteraut) that Wolstat sent out. He followed it up with two other tweets.

19 Jan Ryan Wolstat @WolstatSun RT @jberteraut: Batum already said in a French interview that he'd never sign with the Raps because of what happened before

20 Jan Ryan Wolstat @WolstatSun
Back from a Twitter vacation. Re: Batum, don't remeber him ever bad-mouthing Raps, but the team did say he had a heart issue which might ...

the draft...Ryan Wolstat @WolstatSun ... Might have hurt his draft stock and was never proven or brought up again IIRC. Plus his dad died from heart issue I believe

What I would really like to find is the actual french interview because the ESPN link has nothing negative towards Toronto:

French swingman Nicolas Batum, projected to be a late first-round NBA draft pick, stopped participating in a workout with the Toronto Raptors earlier this week after a stress echo test -- a treadmill test that measures the health of the heart -- came back in the "borderline" area.

"There is an issue with Batum, and nothing is clear," his agent, Bouna Ndiaye, told ESPN.com on Friday afternoon. "The number [the score on his stress echo test] could be a borderline problem if he had a family history of heart problems. But I talked to Nicolas's mother and she said his father didn't die of a heart problem. His team in France and the French national team test him regularly and said they've never seen any indication that he had a heart issue."

A Sports Illustrated report in February said that Batum's father, Henry, suffered a "massive heart attack" and died at the free throw line while playing pro basketball in France when Nicolas was 2 years old. According to Ndiaye, Batum's father died of an aneurysm, not a heart attack.

Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo, reached by phone, refused to comment on the situation.

Batum was scheduled to be in the three-team workout in New Jersey on Friday, but didn't play. He did take a physical, and Ndiaye said results were similar to those in Toronto. Ndiaye said Batum will undergo another test over the weekend and, if it goes well, he'll be able to begin workouts again next week.

Batum also has canceled an open workout in New York scheduled for Saturday.

"He feels fine," Ndiaye said. "He wants to work out. He's been doing great. This morning he really wanted to work out with Joe Alexander. This is disappointing. I really don't think this is a real issue."

It's unclear whether the issue will affect Batum's draft status. It does come at a bad time. After wowing NBA scouts at the Nike Hoop Summit in April 2007, his draft stock has been on the decline. His play in the French league this year wasn't stellar. Neither was a brief appearance at this year's Reebok Eurocamp.

However, he's had some strong individual workouts for teams and was projected as a potential pick somewhere between 17 and 27.

Batum's career to date doesn't warrant $10M/yr. His upside doesn't warrant $10M/yr. Matt had asked me a while ago, maybe in this thread or maybe another, what I thought was fair and I think I said around $7.5M/yr. I think that holds true. I think that Raptors should get in on the bidding action but there are other

But teams offer a salary based in part upon the player's expected performance for the duration of the contract. Or at least that's the hope from my perspective.

Batum's future expected performance is hard to predict based upon his career numbers; some quite nice numbers and some not so good. I believe a team signing Batum for $10M per year is taking a risk but I would not call it an unreasonable risk.